Chapter 32: Heartless Scum Woman
Yan Bei became a prospective father with complex feelings, then formally became a father.
After A Li was born, he personally changed the child’s diapers and personally coaxed him to sleep.
He, a prince of the current dynasty who held the prince’s mansion golden seal in his left hand and the square heaven halberd in his right, learned all the tasks of caring for a nursing infant proficiently in less than half a month.
In the blink of an eye, the child grew up. According to custom, when the child reached one hundred days old, that was also the day she came out of confinement.
During these three months of being together day and night, he actually secretly had the shadow guards investigate her again.
After all, she was still going to become Princess Jingyang. The marriage process had been so bizarre, so he had to ensure there were no issues.
In the end, he confirmed her household registration was genuine. Through discreet inquiries around, he found no suspicions about her. There was no evidence proving any connection to the Imperial Court. Many people around could confirm she truly had no father or mother, only occasionally some distant relatives from ten thousand li away would visit.
On the day the child turned one month old, Wang Huan told him early that she wanted to celebrate privately.
He had also planned it, intending to lay his cards on the table with her at the dinner table.
But early that morning, the shadow guards suddenly brought him a message, saying that the former emperor had issued an imperial edict at dawn, ordering the guards to ride fast horses to the Northern Lands to urge him to enter the Capital City immediately to face the emperor.
At that time, Gao An and their group’s journey was still halfway, with many troops and things, traveling slowly, still three hundred li from the Capital City.
Yan Bei sensed that something had probably happened in the Imperial Palace. After weighing the options, he decided to enter the palace first to see.
Although he had always kept vigilance toward the former emperor, over the past year or so, he had not detected any signs of the Palace targeting Prince Jingyang’s Mansion. On the contrary, news of the former emperor’s critical illness kept coming.
In any case, since the Imperial Family had no intention to eliminate him, it was his duty to maintain the stability of the Imperial Court.
When he arrived outside the palace gate and was about to announce his name to enter, he learned that last night, an urgent express message from eight hundred li had brought the bad news that the First Prince and Second Prince had both encountered storms on their way back to the Capital City.
The Palace City was already under martial law everywhere.
Then Prince Duan, Grand Tutor Chu, Vice Minister Shen, and other court pillars rushed into the palace.
Yan Bei did not dare to leave, but it was also inconvenient to rashly show himself again.
It was not until after nightfall when the palace gate opened and Grand Tutor Chu and the others came out one after another, bringing the news that the former emperor’s condition had stabilized, that he returned home.
With the court situation like this, he had to show himself in the Capital City at dawn under the pretext of arriving early.
Then, revealing his identity to the child’s mother was already urgently necessary both emotionally and rationally.
But when he returned to the familiar place, what awaited him was not a brightly lit room, not her bright eyes and A Li’s loud cries, but pitch blackness where he could not see his fingers!
She was gone!
She had actually taken A Li and left without a word!
On the table, she left only a divorce letter written in her own hand and sealed with an official seal, as well as a farewell letter.
She said she knew he did not want to be forcibly “married.” After he left, she had not expected him to return. So from the moment the child was born, she had made her decision: it was better to let him go free and part ways. She and the child had found a better place to go, and asked him not to look for them anymore!
……To hell with freedom!
He had only returned a little late, and now his wife was gone, and his child was gone?
What happened to the promised hundred-day celebration for the child?
She was a liar!
She had deceived him into bed and also deceived him of his son!
Yan Bei had been mixing in the military camp since age eight, became young leader at ten, took over as Prince Jingyang at fifteen, and along the way had not let any goblins or ghosts succeed, yet he fell into the hands of a landlord’s miss!
He turned around and went to find Zhang Wei. Zhang Wei was waiting for him at the doorway with a large box of jewelry.
Zhang Wei said that after he slipped away without a word, Wang Huan discovered she was pregnant. For livelihood, she had no choice but to consider him dead and find another husband’s family.
This man’s family did big business, was very wealthy, and liked Wang Huan very much. They were just waiting for her to give birth to the child and then marry her.
A while ago, when this man heard Yan Bei had returned, he voluntarily brought out these to let Wang Huan settle with his former husband. But Wang Huan endured and did not tell him.
Zhang Wei also said Wang Huan felt that a melon forcibly plucked must be a bitter gourd, so she hoped he would take the silver money and live well, and not look for her, this heartless woman, in the future.
For the sake of the money, they could be worlds apart and pretend they had never met.
After Zhang Wei finished speaking, he put his arm around him to go to the tavern, but this time Yan Bei did not let him get drunk.
Once Zhang Wei left, he stood up from the table he was lying on, summoned all the guards, and ordered them to search in all directions for that runaway woman!
They searched for a day and a night, but found nothing.
And he himself sat desolately in the inn for a night, unable to sleep.
When night fell again, he mounted his horse and rode along the post road toward the Capital City.
He thought that being able to produce so much silver money to pay off a lover’s former husband was not the style of a rural merchant.
Since they had not found her in all directions, she most likely had gone to the Capital City.
But this night’s post road was not peaceful.
Crows occasionally flew overhead, and faint sounds of hoofbeats came from the night sky.
In those two years, refugees from the south kept moving north. It was said that the First Prince and Second Prince’s mishaps were also related to these people.
He smelled the scent of danger.
Sure enough, from deep in the road, several horses charged out madly.
Immediately after, more than a dozen people rushed out. They wore various clothes and held different weapons, surrounding Yan Bei in a circle.
Most of the guards had gone to search for people, and Yan Bei had only kept two shadow guards following in the shadows.
But they were all extremely experienced experts. The fight lasted a bit long, but the outcome was not in doubt.
When he killed the last person, Yan Bei decided to turn back, but at that moment, from under one of the horses left at the scene came a faint infant cry.
Prince Jingyang had wholeheartedly been a nursing father for more than three months and was especially sensitive to infant cries.
His mount, which had already reared its hooves, was forcibly pulled back by him. He rushed into the pile of corpses and picked up the severely injured A Li.
Having carried him inseparable by his side day and night for more than three months, the child’s features were already engraved in the father’s heart. Moreover, the new swaddling clothes Yan Bei had personally put on him yesterday for his hundred-day celebration were still wrapped around him—there was no mistaking it; this was his own son whom his birth mother had secretly taken away!
But if A Li was here, then where was his mother?
Yan Bei looked at the refugees all over the ground, then handed the child to the shadow guards and swiftly mounted his horse, chasing toward where the refugees had come from.
At the bank of the surging river, a horse carriage was overturned on the embankment, with blood all over the ground and scattered clothes.
An elderly woman and a young maidservant lay in pools of blood, both stabbed.
Yan Bei did not recognize them, but he recognized those clothes. He had seen several in Wang Huan’s room. He had even washed them for her!
He grabbed the woman who still had a breath and pressed her for Wang Huan’s whereabouts.
She opened her mouth but could not speak, only stretched her hand toward the river behind him, then stopped breathing.
Yan Bei went down to the riverbank but found no trace of Wang Huan—only another murder scene ten li away. The road below was the surging river water; once fallen in, it was naturally impossible for him to find her.
His former wife who had sent him a divorce letter had actually died at the hands of refugees just like Princess Yongjia of Prince Duan’s Mansion!
And that Princess Yongjia was also said to have been carrying her own child during the murder; he could not help but associate it, so when the government officials successively sent troops to investigate Princess Yongjia’s cause of death, he had also gone to see.
He had even been to the place where Yongjia jumped off the cliff.
He had seen the corpse with his own eyes.
Although the princess’s corpse was unrecognizable, her figure and the intact half of her face were still identifiable; that was absolutely not the Wang Huan he knew.
That always smiling Wang Huan was dead!
He could no longer settle accounts with her.
He had forever lost his wife.
Even if she had abandoned him, he could not utter a word cursing her to get her retribution.
In the following three years, he never mentioned it.
He willingly stayed with the child, living as a widower. He could not help but blame himself. He always thought, if he had returned earlier that day, would it have been different?
It was all his fault!
He deserved to guard an empty room alone as a widower!
But damn it, he never would have thought—who the hell could have thought?
Just when he had already concluded she was long dead, her handwriting actually appeared in the Du Family’s conspiracy circle!
Just after he had been immersed in self-blame and regret, unable to let go for a full three years, her handwriting suddenly appeared out of nowhere!
The marriage certificate and divorce letter she left behind were still in his hands. Over these years, he had looked at them countless times, and every time he could not help but slap himself, so he absolutely could not mistake the handwriting on that eulogy—it was hers!
Since she could still write, it meant she was still alive.
And since she was still alive, even if she did not come to find him, she actually did not even look for A Li!
This heartless woman!
This liar of hers!
This unscrupulous slag woman!
